Greetings everyone well it was supposed to be light cloud cover in Birmingham but it was sunny most of the time but I used all the old favourite spots and just about did justice to the buses and before finishing went to have a first glance at the Edgbaston Village section  from  the library, again a lot too much sunshine but I'll return at some stage and get the whole thing covered. Afterwards I called in at Peter Turlands to pick up some models he had ready for me to collect, Yardley Wood model club will be no more after 2023 as Peter is retiring. Anyway I'm home now, have edited the second of the A50 trucks films taken last Friday and also carrying on with the cine scanning. Here are some shots from Birmingham.

A two pronged attack today or perhaps three prongs really as I'm rescanning a few sections of OTA material which were juddering too much to correct and then I've been using the Super8 copier to scan some of John Bishops more modern era cine. At the same time I've made a start on the 3 hours of material recorded on the A50 last Friday. It was still bitterly cold going to church this morning but the temperature has raised a little and much of the snow has thawed other than the road which is packed ice.

Tomorrow we are hopefully going to take advantage of the light cloud cover and film at Birmingham and then in the early afternoon pick up some new models from Peter Turland. I'm gad to say we have secured for OTA the collection of our friend Ken Harris who is alas in a care home with rapidly advancing dementia. We can arrange collection, copying etc of any media collection with transport content and make sure it is safe and can be accessed in the future. At present I'm scanning trams, buses and trolleys in Switzerland, Germany and Austria 1959-61.I don't think Austria has featured in my slide shows for a while so lets dip into the archive.

Isn't it a fad coming to the end of a long job then having to clear up some bit you would rather were already done. Out of nearly 50 400' reels of cine just 4 need to be rescanned at there is to much rolling in a section to be corrected, there are also 6 reels from various collections I own which need to be scanned so I can take them down to the OTA in Shrewsbury for out meeting this coming Thursday. Our schedule for the week ahead may well be film Birmingham Monday and York Thursday. While I was getting two scanning machines going I decided that there may be a few folk new to our site and took a few pictures of the PMP set up.

and for the lorry fans some more shots from the A50 yesterday at Uttoxeter roundabout

A lot to show for my session on the Uttoxter roundabout A50 Staffordshire, 3 hours of films and hundreds of photos, a coupler of old faithful ERFs one of the retained JCB duo and one on a hay journey which we have seen and filmed many times but always sets the seal on a good day out. Had all my cold weather gear on from electric gloves and socks through hat, scarf etc and as it got up to around 8 deg I was feeling quite warm in the sunshine.I'm busy trying to get all the cine film scans saved as digital files and DVDs, a few have sections unstable but mostly I can cure and roll with tools on Edius.

A busy day all round the latest three PMP DVD releases are already on the shop and I'll put the digital download versions on this evening. Tomorrow I'm filming lorries at Uttoxeter roundabout , an old favourite location but not too far away so I can retreat to the warmth when I've had enough. Next week looks a good one for bus filming and we have Birmingham and York in our sights.

Mandy is out yet again this evening helping her cousin out who has been in hospital for a few weeks now but yesterday moved to a rehab ward nearer their home. It is no problem but we do have to plan meals and nights out around it. The snow is still all about and our estate road a sheet of ice. We went out and bought a lot more rock salt to spread. By the weekend it should be getting less cold, I might even head out with the camera on Friday. A bit short on time but the next two films are edited time has probably run out on getting the covers made. Tomorrow we venture to a question and answer session with our MP. We hope you are all keeping warm and dry.

I note that Youtube is still pouring out all sorts of bumpf on their latest Youtube changes, no idea at all what it is about and I even watched a promo video which might as well as been in Serbo Croat for me, perhaps they hope that it will make sense to someone but that isn't going to be me.  Is there anyone left who can speak plain English.

As I've just finished a programme on Oldham buses lets take a dip back a couple of years in that direction!

A fraught couple of days when problem after problem seemed to pop up from nowhere and as so often is the case with technology it is impossible to find the source of the matter. Anyway a busy evening last night using our ( thank goodness we have them) digital files for all our recent productions. The huge file back up exercise  came to an end last night so we have two 100% backed up extension drives plus another I'm using as feeders to the main drives.

So with relief the East Kent RCC archive film has been completed, I could have kept going on it but enough energy had been spent, it was almost at the end this afternoon when the completed file vanished but I found a duplicate I had made,more luck than judgement but the disc burner has been a source of some of my woes but now works fine again. I got another batch of 3D scanned figures ready to that happy time when I have a few hours to spare painting up the figures for the latest dioramas.

I'll stick with Kent for my evenings slide show, I need to take off some stills from the film for the cover then it can be added to the shop tomorrow, glad to see the back of that, then ready to edit Crewe and Oldham bus films.

To conclude for tonight the RNCM at Manchester of which we are benefactors  has raised £61kon their Engage appeal to support getting young musicians through their training. The college celebrates there 50th anniversary this year and there are many events for us to attend. We are still looking at travel this year, we will go somewhere!

I don't know what is happening with the disc burner but the 2023 titles are all coming out as the Birmingham archive. When we got the new computer it had no disc burner nor means of importing film. They sent a disc burner which seems to do nothing but fail to make the correct discs when doing the master. I can find no explanation, I'll try buying another burner it is all very frustrating. I'll have to remake all the 2023 discs thank goodness we are still only in January. Filmed at Oldham today, snowed going there then that stopped  and clear blue sky, I did my best to get the filming done then back home to a scribbled note from Mandy that all the recent DVDs are wrong. I'm starting to think seriously that we should pack PMP in.

Another tense technology moment when the drive I tried to back up last weekend vanished. I've recovered it and finally got the Seagate 6TB external drive working. It was impossible to transfter the huge files on Windows 10 thus I'm tryping on the super Windows 10 computer while the old Windows 7 is doing al the hard work. If the disks were compatible I'd have use my trusty Windows XP machine. Like everying it is all supposed to be better but when the crunch comes you have to return to more reliable machines. Anyway I'm on the last of the current batch of Phil Tatt film scanning so I can pick up with my own Terry Barker reels of which there are only 4 left to scan. Add to that the rest of the batch from John Bishop when the external drives are finished backing up I can save everything and take a break for a week. I was considering splitting the Kent material into two volumes but I'll just finish the East Kent with what I have as it lasts an hour at least.

The weather for the next week ahead looks a bit challenging for filming but I'm sure I'll get somerthing done this week. We are off to The Crown tonight to bid farewell to Janet and Simon whose five year tenure didn't quite go as planned with two years of pandemic. The cunning plan for the Bells o move to The Crown hasn't happened but could a few months down the line. We felt quite at home this morning as St Wilfreds while they take cautious steps to modernise their services. We are really trying to cut down any reasons for stress as we can well do without it. Not too many DVD orders this week which suits us. I can't go plugging anything in tonight to get photos as I don't want to upset the huge file tranfer.

All day working on the Kent bus archive film but I did get distracted a few times and found some more gems I could add but I already have an hour so not really sure what to do, I don't think there is enough to divide it into two pieces although that is a thought. The next archive will be overseas although I've not made my pick as yet but is could be Netherlands. So just in case it is some shots from Netherlands as my slide show tonight.